Virtually Real
Blyth Gallery
Private View
Tuesday 23 Nov 6
- 8.30 pm
24 Nov - 17 Dec
2010
Opening Times: Mon-Sun:
9am-9pm
Artists
Bruce Ingram
Grant W Miller
James Moore
Suzanne Moxhay
Julia Willms
Simon Woolham
Dawn Woolley
‘In these angles and corners, the dreamer would appear to enjoy the
repose that divides being and non-being. He is the being of an unreality’ Gaston Bachelard
FROM the early origins of spatial
realism in paintings to the flattened planes and spaces of modernism, the
illusion of space has been a central aesthetic concern throughout the canon of
art history.
In a visual culture where photography and CGI create facsimile spaces that are disposable and instantly digestible, this exhibition aims to bring together work that subverts the representation of space. Each work contains an element of trickery that confounds rather than confirms our expectations of reality. The artists ask the viewer to believe in the integrity of the scene, inviting them to look closer and explore the fiction of the space they have depicted.
In some of the works there is a blending
of dimensional forms. Bruce Ingram’s collages take on a physical presence and
become sculptural, blurring boundaries between figurative
sensibilities and abstract materiality. The real is reconfigured ‘… through a
playful and experimental process of collage and collection, the experience of
the everyday world is gathered and organised within new forms of art works.’
Images lifted from different periods of art history are mixed with the consumer
culture of today resulting in works that confuse space and time. Bruce has
recently graduated from the Royal Collage of Art Sculpture MA and has exhibited
at The Agency in
In Dawn Woolley’s
work the 2-Dimensional and 3-Dimensional are juxtaposed in a comment on reality
and idealisation. While
it is apparent that the female in the work is a photograph the viewer is
invited to suspend their disbelief and see her as body and image simultaneously.
Using photography, installation and stereoscopes Dawn aims to examine ‘… the idea that a
2-dimensional image can represent a 3-dimensional object. The arrangements of
the cut-outs reveal the underside – the back of the image and a
representational void.’ Dawn completed MA Photography at the Royal College of
Art in 2008 and has works held in the collection of Kiyosato
Musuem of Photographic Arts in
Simon Woolham’s ‘Pop-up’
drawings also inhabit the space between two and three dimensions. Beginning
with biro drawings ‘… dilapidated environments come to life in a skint version of enchantment: a tree stump or a broken
fence are filled with the meanings of the events that go on around and about
them.’ Cut and folded paper transform everyday objects into emotive sights for
memory and recollection. Simon graduated from MA Fine Art at
Grant Miller also deals with the illusion of space,
creating paintings that appear abstract in the first instance, but reveal
themselves to be complex physical spaces. ‘…where depth competes with the
surface, a density is complimented by a sense of void, and the inside is
constantly challenged by a dominant exteriority. Oscillation between
two-dimensional, three-dimensional and beyond-dimensional forms is at the core
of Grant Miller’s paintings.’ Grant lives & works in
Invented architectural space forms the basis of James
Moore’s work, where subject matter is built up from 2-D planes of painted paper
to create a 3-D CGI world. A virtual
snapshot is taken and the resulting scene then becomes reduced back to the
realm of painting, or animated as a rolling camera
shot through the space. ‘The models are idealised environments that I have
built up from drawings, a mixture of real and fictional places. Scenes from
games, TV shows, films, comics and real places are re-organised into my own
imagined worlds.’ James graduated from MA Fine Art at
Suzanne Moxhay builds
collages from found imagery into dystopian scenes that are seemingly realistic
and yet completely fabricated. Manipulation of space drives the process of her
work through its different stages. ‘From the photograph, to the print, to the
three dimensional set in the studio, and then back to the photograph, imagery
is continually moved through real and illusory space.’ Suzanne attended the
Royal Academy Schools from 2004 – 2007 and has recently shown work at the Jerwood Space in London & Big Screen,
The relationship between real and imaginary spaces is
also explored in Julia Willms video installations.
Her video projections seamlessly merge into existing architectural spaces,
offering the viewer a convincing version of reality that slowly disintegrates
into impossible situations. ‘The installation is about the threshold between
the real and the imagined space. The spectator stands in the real space and is
invited to cross the threshold and step into the image. Julia studied Media Art at the
Gam | Obrist
Gingold Gallery, in
Blyth Gallery
level 5
[off
SW7 2AZ
gallery@imperial.ac.uk
dawn.woolley.rca.ac.uk
